This week we have been learning about the features of diary writing! The children have used this skill to begin writing a diary for the character Jeff in our class reader, ‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom’. Diary writing is usually written in the past tense, uses the first person, is chatty and informal, sometimes uses slang and is in chronological order. We were delighted to hear that many of your children already keep their own diaries and that they enjoyed learning about other famous fiction and real life diaries – can your child name any?

Spelling – this week the words contain prefixes.

We will check these next Monday 12th May: subheading, submarine, international, interrupt, superhuman, superlative, antiseptic, antibiotic, automatic, autobiography

In SPaG this week we looked at Standard English and reinforced the rule that no matter what you say, with an accent, dialect or use of slang, we must always write in Standard English. The only time it is acceptable not to do so is when writing speech in a story (which actually makes it more interesting!) or when writing our own diaries.

We hope you found the Parentmail useful that we sent this week regarding TT Rock Stars.  It has some good ideas and motivation for really ramping up your child’s times table practising – little and often is best.  We used TT Rock Stars to carry out some practice sessions this week and have produced a ‘heat map’ of areas that they are confident and not so confident in.  We have shared these with the children so that they know what tables they need to work on the most.  Our best advice is, don’t panic!  Log on to TT Rock Stars and let your child use the ‘soundcheck’ facility. 

During our daily maths lessons, we have been learning how to divide single and double digits by 10.  Using a place value chart and a Gattegno chart, the children are able to see quite easily what happens to numbers when we divide by 10 – can your child tell you what happens?

Following on from last week’s learning of the structure of a flower, we used celery and food dye to show the children how the moisture and nutrients actually get to the parts of the plant via little tubes called xylem.  We also took time to check in with our bean investigation to record any changes since last week. We learnt how plants create their own food (glucose) through the process of photosynthesis, and tested whether plants grow towards the sunlight by making a plant maze. Can your child remember the photosynthesis equation? 

We continued our learning of the Sikh religion by talking about uniforms and how important they are.  The children discussed the ‘Five Ks’ and were fascinated by the ways in which Sikhs outwardly show their faith. We wonder if your child can tell you all of the ways?  The children also learned of the last and final Guru – Guru Granth Sahib Ji, which is actually the Sikh holy book.  Sikh followers treat their holy book as if it were a human guru.  The children enjoyed looking at the ways in which it is looked after as if it was a real person.  See if your child can tell you some of them!